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NIU on its way to having its first female president

Board votes unanimously to enter into negotiations

By Andrew King
Shaw Media

Sept. 13, 2018

Mark Busch/mbusch@shawmedia.com

Caption

Northern Illinois University will begin negotiations with Lisa Freeman to remove the “acting” tag from her title and make her the university's first female president. Freeman is shown here Thursday with NIU Board of Trustees Chairman Wheeler Coleman.

DeKALB – Northern Illinois University will begin negotiations with Lisa Freeman to remove the “acting” tag from her title and make her the university’s first female president.

After nearly 4 hours of closed session discussion, the Board of Trustees unanimously voted (9-0) on Thursday afternoon to negotiate with Freeman, rather than pursue any other candidates for the position, vacated when disgraced ex-President Doug Baker stepped down in June 2017.

“It is an honor and privilege to be here today,” Freeman said, following the vote, and a lengthy standing ovation from a packed room.

Freeman took over as interim president at the time of Baker’s resignation, and initially stated she wasn’t interested in filling the role on a permanent basis. Her tune changed in the past 6 months, however, and the board named her their sole candidate during a July meeting.

During a forum on Aug. 30, Freeman keyed on campus safety and fostering partnerships with other city agencies in order to provide a brighter future for NIU.

Freeman’s candidacy received various endorsements from NIU leadership and NIU-affiliated groups during the Reports of Board Committees and Board Liasons section of the meeting. Paul Kassel, Dean for the College of Visual and Performing Arts, spoke on behalf of the university’s deans, stating that the deans offered their “complete and unqualified support for Dr. Lisa Freeman.”

Joe Sener, Vice President of the NIU Alumni Association, also took to the podium, stating that the NIUAA “strongly supports” Lisa Freeman as President, specifically citing her commitment to alumni and to maintaining transparency. The NIU Foundation, a 501(c)3 that works closely with the university also offered Freeman its complete support.

In the past 10 years, NIU’s enrollment has fallen about 30 percent, from 24,397 to 17,169, according to 10th-day numbers released by the university Tuesday.

“For this point in time, we think Lisa possessed the right skills to navigate us through troubled waters to help turn this university around,” The Board of Trustees’ chairman, Wheeler Coleman, said.

Freeman was vice president and provost during Baker’s presidency. He stepped down and was ultimately given about $600,000 in severance after a state investigation found that, since Baker became president in 2013, NIU officials improperly classified high-paying consulting positions as affiliate employees on Baker’s orders to avoid state rules that require competitive bidding.

Before joining NIU, Freeman spent 16 years as faculty at Kansas State University, where she served as a principal investigator on research and training grants, taught pharmacology and the responsible conduct of research, and acted as a mentor to numerous graduate students, postdoctoral trainees and early-career faculty members.

Freeman earned her bachelor’s degree in 1981, then a master’s degree and a doctor of veterinary medicine in 1986, from Cornell University, according to her biography at niu.edu. She went on to earn a doctor of philosophy at Ohio State University in 1989.

“I look forward to working with everyone, those who supported my [candidacy] and those who didn’t, to move this university forward,” Freeman said Thursday.